Tread

April 9

Epilogue

The following year

"I'm so sorry for your loss, dear," a woman whose name I can't remember but whose face I know from my wedding only a couple of months earlier grips my hand tightly, making me acutely aware of the two rings resting on my finger. A brittle smile is the only response I give her before she passes on to the coffin and my dead husband. There's another one behind her. Endless condolences from people I can't remember, don't know, and don't even care about.

"Do you need anything, Em?" Rai asks, sidling up beside me, a baby in her arms. She looks good with a kid. Too bad the thing isn't hers.

"How're Zeke and Ryker doing?" A mother should care about her kids after all.

"Zeke's fine. Kate's got him and I think he finished his bottle," she supplies, patting the baby over her shoulder and getting him to burp. "Ryker, here, is doing great. He hasn't been fussy at all. But Helmi could also be the reason."

I turn away, my jealousy over Rai's current situation clear as day on my face. If you'd asked me a year ago where we'd all be I would have said Rai would be pregnant and living in Finland with her beau, Kate wouldn't even be my friend but that chick from the writing program, and I'd be fighting for yet another unpaid internship at a publishing house and sending my poems off to anyone who would read them.

Reality didn't work out that way. The reality was I'd gotten pregnant; the father had been sick; and he'd seen a way to live on after death. Months. Just a few months in my life that destroyed any goals I might have had. Marriage. Babies. A dead husband. Severe postpartum depression that was numbed with the pills my doctor was prescribing.

Fixing my 'everything is fine' face, I turn back to Rai and hold out my arms for the baby in hers. Samson is a few feet away in a sleek black coffin. His parents decided to do an open casket and I can smell the formaldehyde from here. But this is the role I decided to take; a move from poet to actress.

I stand and the room gets quiet. Eyes track me as I walk out of the parlor and into the next kitchen where I find Kate rattling a toy in front of my other son. Words are beyond me. I simply scoop him up and move away, out of the building, and across a wide backyard stretched with acres of wilderness.

My legs wobble and I sink to the cool grass. A door opens behind me and I hear the quiet hush of whispers but no one approaches. Closing my eyes, I pull my children against my chest, not because I want to and not even because there's some instinct inside me. Their little bodies are warm and there's a chill in me I'm hoping they'll thaw. Head down, I bury my face in their downy, curly brown hair and breathe.

"You'll catch your death," a deep voice murmurs before a warm, heavy coat envelops the boys and me. It smells like fire, like someone hang it next to a fireplace in a warm house with dinner bubbling on the stove and a family dancing around each other in a kitchen.

"Maybe that's what I want," I say to the stranger via my children's hair.

"You wouldn't be the first."

Lifting my head, I meet the man's eyes. Or try to. He's tall and hasn't bothered squatting. I raise a brow and look at the ground. He dutifully drops to a knee beside me, a small smile tugging up the corner of his lip. He looks a little like Samson, however, the islander in him is more pronounced; it's in the tilt of his eyes, the swath of curling hair braided down his back, and the deeper tint to his tan skin. There's warmth in his brown eyes, a life of joy in the lines of his face. He's kissed by the sun and good fortune. It reminds me of my own sad state. The dark bags under my eyes, sickly pallor of my skin, weight loss instead of gain from the babies, the pieces of skin that now sag and the stretch marks that declare me a mother. A lifetime ago I would have thought about flirting with this man, would have giggled drunkenly, and written my number on a napkin before trying to slyly slip it in his hand. Now, I turn away and face the setting sun.

"Something you need?"

If he detects the cool undertones in my voice, he chooses to ignore it. "I came to say sorry."

"Thank you."

"No. I don't think you understand." That catches my attention and I turn back. "I'm sorry that my nephew was an asshole. I'm sorry he dragged you into this and forced you to be a mother too soon. It was unfair of him."

"Life's unfair."

"That it is." He pauses. "Still, I'm sorry, Emmeline."

He surprises me. "Nobody calls me that."

"I do." He thrusts his hand out, warm smile playing across his lips. "Mataio Winters. I'm Samson's uncle."